Ah. Burnout. Possibly the greatest arcade racing series ever. Well, the
first two titles might not have been the greatest, but after EA stepped
in, things changed. For the better. Burnout 3: Takedown was
groundbreaking and deserved the critical acclaim it achieved. Dodging
traffic at incredible speeds while taking out opponents was easily
affiliated to Burnout 3. This time, everything is turned up a notch.
The first thing you’ll notice is the new slick menu interface with one
of the game’s faster vehicles blazing trough traffic in the background.
Create your profile and the game will see if you have a Burnout 3 or
Madden 06 save file. If you have one of these you’ll get an extra car
in Crash mode. Two if you have both save files. Now you can get started
on the World Tour to get new cars, play one of the games multiplayer
modes or dive into Xbox Live.
The first event you’ll play in World Tour is Traffic Attack in one of
the game’s sunnier tracks, Sunshine Keys. Traffic Attack is the new
mode in Burnout Revenge and introduces Traffic Checking. In Revenge,
you can “check” traffic by ramming into them. You can only hit same-way
traffic that’s smaller than trailers and big rigs, though. This is a
good thing, because it would have been too easy if you could just blaze
trough traffic. Also, it allows for much more traffic without it
getting too difficult. Still, it would be nice if there were more big
rigs and trailers to avoid. You can also do Traffic Check Takedowns by
launching traffic into opponents. In Traffic attack, your car is armed
with explosives and a countdown on the top of the screen shows when the
bomb will go off. When the timer goes below 20 seconds, checking
traffic increases your time left. Your goal in Traffic Attack is to
score big by checking traffic while keeping your timer over 0.00. The
fastest way to earning scores and gaining seconds on the clock is by
doing trick and skill shots. For example, send a van flying onto an
oncoming bus to get an Awesome Skill Shot.
Awesome is a word you’ll want to see often in Burnout Revenge. It’s the
best you can get in the new rating system. Your driving is rated while
you drive, ranging from OK to Awesome. Doing Takedowns and skillful
stunts like Awesome Drift quickly heightens your rating. Get a Gold
Medal and an Awesome rating to Perfect an event. This’ll earn you 5
stars that add up to your rank. There are 10 ranks in the game. You’ll
start with Harmless and finally reach the last rank, Elite. Reaching
Elite Rank also unlocks a car based on a certain upcoming shooting game
from Criterion, makers of the Burnout series. Ranks are reached by
earning enough stars. Stars are obtained by getting medals and ratings
in events. As before mentioned, getting Awesome rating and a Gold Medal
gives you five stars, while getting a less great result gives less
stars. Reaching Elite Rank is way too easy, as you don’t even need to
Perfect most of the events. It feels too short when you rank up almost
every time, often without even starting many of the events in your
previous ranks. Each rank unlocks its own series of events spread
around some of the tracks in Revenge.
The tracks of Burnout have been heavily improved from Burnout 3, with
lots of jumps and shortcuts to vary the experience. With all these
jumps, Revenge also introduces the new Vertical Takedowns. Simply do a
jump and mysteriously manage to land on an opponent to do one of these.
You’ll need to do a Vertical Takedown in each location as it is one of
the 8 Challenges found in every Challenge Sheet for the game’s 8
locations. Clever mathematicians can easily calculate that there are a
total of 64 challenges, although not very (or at all) different from
location to location. Other challenges include blowing up 25 vehicles
in a Crash event at Sunshine Keys (the hardest in my opinion) and
taking down a special car in a race event. This is usually a car that
stands out from your other opponents, probably a Special car like the
Logitech Racer (an F1 with Logitech Decals). Another challenge is to do
a certain amount of Revenge Takedowns. Revenge Takedowns are achieved
by taking out an opponent that has taken you out. Complete the
Challenge Sheet for a location to unlock a Special car.
Let’s talk Crash. It’s awesome. This time around, it’s even better.
Unfortunately, the quantity is heavily decreased from Burnout 3’s 100
Crash events to fewer, but much bigger events. Still, the quality
doesn’t seem good enough to make up for the loss of quantity. The Crash
mode has seen great changes this time. The first you’ll notice is the
Golf-style meter that determines your car’s acceleration. Remember the
tricky spin/release gas/throttle combinations you had to perform to
start with a boost in Burnout 3? Now you just need to hit the green
spots to get a Perfect start and a full boost. Most crash locations
have big jumps. Jumping in Crash mode feels breathtaking and the weight
and wind on your car affects the way you control in-air. Hit traffic
and let her rip! Watch as traffic pile up and use your Aftertouch
cleverly to position your car where you want it. As traffic gets
damaged and more cars are mixed in the pile-up(s), your Boost meter
grows. When it reaches 100% you need to button-mash B to set off the
Crashbreaker. The button-mashing seems a little stupid though,
especially as the cars with greater Crashbreakers are impossible to use
fully as your thumb is not fast enough. You can also use the
Crashbreaker several times, as long as the meter grows to 100%. On the
upper-left corner on the screen there’s a counter that shows how many
cars have been involved in the pile-up, and how many vehicles there are
in total. There’s of course a great challenge if you want to get all
vehicles to join the pile-up(s), which is not easy. The Crash cars you
drive yourself are not particularly impressive compared to the ones in
Burnout 3. I really miss the Fire Truck… And even here the cars come in
updated versions, which has always been the worst aspect of the Burnout
series.
Oh yes. The cars! Criterion got there own car designers, and boy did
they do well! The cars are incredibly stylish. There’s a total of 78
cars (80 if you have the two save files) in Revenge. The “normal” cars
are the cooler ones. The two cars you start with have a boost speed of
160 mph and have similar designs as the Sport and Super classes in
Burnout 3. So no silly compact cars this time! You’ll unlock cars fast,
as Revenge suffers from being too easy for anyone familiar with the
Burnout series. Burnout Revenge also updates there vehicles, apparently
not caring that it’s the weaker aspects of the series… You could say
they’re in 3 classes; ST, DX and GT. But they’re not ordered like in
Burnout 3. They’re ordered after how good they are or how exclusive
they are. Finding your favorite car simply means horizontally scrolling
through the many vehicles. There are really just 16 cars that have a
really unique design when not counting Crash or Special cars… For
example, a Factory M-Type DX is an updated version of the Factory
M-Type ST, while the Factory Type GT is an updated version of the
Factory M-Type DX. So there are 46 cars that are won by completing
events in World Tour, plus the two you start with, the 12 Special cars
you’ll get by achieving certain goals and 18 Crash vehicles. Then
there’s two extra that are unlocked by having certain save files…
Strangely, I got 100% before I should have, simply because I have an
extra car from my Burnout 3 save file. I still miss 2 Signature
Takedowns to get the last Special car and a rightful 100%…
Signature Takedowns are back, with a total of 24 (3 in each location).
You’ve also got the modes from Burnout 3, like Road Rage, Race,
Eliminator, Preview and Burning Lap. Some of these have changed. In the
Eliminator mode the last placed driver is eliminated per 30-seconds,
not per lap. And the timer in Road Rage has changed too. It’s much
shorter, often starting at 30-50 seconds, but time is extended by doing
2 or 3 takedowns before time runs out. Another cool change is the
Crashbreaker events. Race, Road Rage and Eliminator includes
Crashbreakers in the later ranks! Just like in Burnout 3’s Crash mode,
press B to set off the Crashbreaker. This is only available if you’ve
crashed or have been taken out. Take an opponent with you in the
explosion to get an Explosive Payback. Of course, taking more opponents
with you means bigger score and bigger chance to win. The best is Total
Payback, where you blow up all 5 opponents (Race or Eliminator). Hit no
one at all, and you’ll waste your boost.
This is also an excellent Live and multiplayer game.
The racing itself is great. Everything blurs and the screen tends to
shake. Especially when jumping in Crash, as everything shakes and feels
like the big jump it is.
Now… Music! The featured soundtrack includes 41 songs from artists like
The Doors, Animal Alpha, Yellowcard, The Chemical Brothers and LCD
Soundsystem. My favorite song is The Big Jump by The Chemical Brothers.
That beat is so awesome… The soundtrack is improved from Burnout 3, but
still has a bit too much punk rock over it. It’s more hard-core rock
(Animal Alpha is an example) and Techno (The Bravery is an example),
thankfully. But of course, Xbox owners like me can easily switch to
custom soundtracks and listen to their favorite music, in my case Rap.
That’s my fizzle, drizzle…
The sound effects are also amazing, especially in Crash. You can almost feel the explosions and the metal crushing!
All in all, Burnout Revenge actually isn’t the best in the series. All
of these new features and improvements mean nothing when the difficulty
is so incredibly easy. The 169 events are simply unchallenging, even
the timed races that were so hard in Burnout 3. There’s also room for
improvements. There are plenty of obvious glitches that haven’t been
sorted out, like the Crash Cam appearing when you haven’t crashed yet
and so on. They still need to vary the car designs more and turn up the
difficulty. And there’s no Single Race! And what happened to Crash FM?
I didn’t like it in Burnout 3, but they could have tried improving it
and not just limit it to introduction and training videos! I found that
voice to be damn sexy…
But still, this is an awesome racer. You’ll get all the things that made Burnout 3 great and
more, especially if you thought it was too hard, but anyone looking for
a challenging Burnout game might be disappointed.
